A Little Taste For Danger
by MizJoely
Summary: Molly Hooper has always had a taste for dangerous men, and Sherlock Holmes is no exception. A post-Reichenbach nostalgia-fest with tattoo!lock and some history rewriting. Sherlolly.


_Blame mollyandherjumper for yet another tattoo!lock fic. I'm feeling nostalgic, so it takes place immediately after Reichenbach, at Molly's flat. And will be an AU to S3 for obvious reasons. Also a great deal of S-E-X, so if that alarms you, do feel free to skip this one!_

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She liked a man with ink; it gave him an air of danger, and Molly Hooper had always been drawn to dangerous men. Moriarty, for example; even when he was playing sweet little 'Jim from IT' he'd shown her his skull tattoo, expertly etched onto his left shoulder, when he'd allowed her to 'seduce' him on their third (and final) date.

Of course, after the fact, when she was faced with exactly _how_ dangerous her one-off lover turned out to be, she'd been horrified…but there was a small part of Molly Hooper that would always thrill to the fact that she'd had such a close encounter with the most dangerous criminal London had ever seen…and lived to tell the tale.

She prided herself on how well she'd kept that dark knowledge carefully hidden away, far from even Sherlock's prying eyes and fearsome deductive skills, but as Sherlock peeled off his bloodied shirt and dropped it on her bedroom floor, the sight of the tattoos decorating his upper left arm and shoulder nearly caused her knickers to kindle and explode, not to mention her ovaries.

"Wh-when did you get these?" she blurted out, ghosting her fingers over the intricate combination of poppy flowers (an unhappy reminder of his days using), chemical formulae and…bees? She'd never seen him shirtless before today, the day he'd jumped from the roof of St. Bart's to save the lives of John Watson, Greg Lestrade, and Martha Hudson, had never seen his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, but she'd never even suspected the possibility that he had any ink on his gorgeous, fit body.

"A few months back," he replied, wincing a bit…no, wait that wasn't a wince, it was more of a…shiver? A reaction to her light touch, anyway. Emboldened by that, she continued to trace the line of honeybees entwined with the chemical formula for adrenalin on his bicep. Oh, clever; they formed a double helix shape, like a DNA strand! She danced her fingers up, up, to stop at the cluster of poppy flowers – with small, barely discernable skulls etched into the center of each bloom – decorating his shoulder, feeling him shiver again.

"Molly," he said warningly, his voice deep and slightly raspy; surely the events of the day – his faked suicide, the tense moments in the morgue when the look-alike corpse was exchanged for his very much alive self as he slipped away in a minimal disguise – were catching up to him. Which meant it had to be exhaustion that caused the rumble in his voice, and not…something else.

"Sorry," she said, entirely insincerely as she reluctantly pulled her fingers away.

But when she moved to step around him, intending to leave him in privacy in her bedroom so he could finish changing into the clothes he would wear when his brother's car arrived to carry him safely out of London a few hours hence, she was stopped by his arm around her waist, spinning her so she faced him, pulling her close. Close enough that she had to tip her head up to meet his gaze. Close enough that he could surely feel the rapid beat of her heart as her chest pressed into his. Close enough that their breaths mingled as he dipped his head down, down, down, stopping only when his lips were scant centimeters from hers. "I don't know when I'll be back. If ever."

The words were a warning; don't wait for me, no matter what happens between us here and now. Don't expect anything beyond this moment.

"I don't, I won't," she said aloud, answering the unspoken warning.

He nodded, once, then pulled her in for a kiss that tasted of equal parts cigarettes and desperation, a bittersweet combination at odds with the softness of his lips.

His lips, however, were the only soft things about him; his tongue was a sword, striking and stroking against hers, his hands were hard on her hips as he pulled her closer, and the press of his erection was a burning brand against her core.

She wasn't soft either; she'd wanted this moment for too long to be anything but diamond-bright and determined as she met the slashes of his tongue with equal strokes of her own. She bit down on his bottom lip when they paused for breath, nipping lightly and then with more force when he moved his hand from her hips to her hair, tugging the dark strands free of the confines of her pony-tail.

She slid her hand over his ink-bedecked arm, fingers dancing down the line of bees and chemical formulae until she reached his wrist. He broke the kiss at that point, sliding his lips along her cheek to her throat, long fingers massaging her head, nails lightly scraping along her scalp as she moaned her approval. Her hand clenched on his wrist before moving back up his arm to his shoulder, and from there to the sharp peak of his clavicle, up the column of his elegant throat, pausing to stroke the arch of one sharp zygomatic bone before ending tangled in his hair. The dark curls were matted with sweat and streaked with the blood – his own blood – that had been used to give his false death verisimilitude, to fool John Watson ( _no, don't think about the pain and anguish in his face as he watched Molly wheeling the not-dead body of his friend into the morgue_ ) into believing the lie they'd created together.

She didn't care that he smelled faintly of sweat and cigarettes; she didn't care that this was the worst possible way for them to come together, or that she would likely regret their mutual impulsiveness in the cold clear light of morning (she doubted it, how could she ever regret finally being with the man she loved?). All she cared about was him: holding him, being held by him, feeling his lips on her throat and his hands on her head and his hard form pressed to hers.

She moved her lips to Sherlock's ear and bit down on the lobe; as if that had been a signal he'd been waiting for, his hands moved from her head to her waist, seizing her tightly as he branded her lips with another searing kiss, pressing her down on her bed and grinding his erection against her rapidly-dampening core.

Clothing removal became her paramount concern; he already had a head start but she was quick to join him in becoming topless, her jumper and blouse and bra ending in a tangled heap on the floor next to his ruined shirt. Trouser removal was a little slower going as he explored her torso with lips and tongue and teeth, nipping and licking and sucking at the tender flesh, his hands warm as they stroked the tender flesh thus revealed. She moaned when he laved his tongue over her nipples, and gasped when his teeth bit gently down on each pebbled nub. Then his hands were undoing her trousers while hers groped at his button and zip, pushing and tugging to free his hot, thick erection. She grasped it greedily, stroking her thumbs up and down the hard length, eagerly accepting his gasps and soft groans as she cupped his bollocks and slid her fingertips over the sensitive skin of his frenulum.

He ghosted his fingers over her pubic mound, sliding them into the crease between her labia minora, the growing wetness allowing him to easily slip one, then two fingers inside her. The feeling of his thumb on her clitoris drew an extended moan from her lips; the crook of his fingers deep inside her brought out a series of high-pitched mewls that would embarrass her were she to emit them under any other circumstances.

She was so lost in sensation – the feel of his erection in her hands, his fingers working their magic on her own body, his lips against her throat, sucking a dark, claiming mark in the soft flesh above her pulse point – that she barely noticed when he kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his trousers. She did notice, however, when he pulled his fingers away from her body; she made a protesting whine but stopped once she realized he was tugging impatiently at her khakis, and instead did her best to help him strip her bare, knickers and trousers coming away at the same time.

It wasn't sexy, she supposed, the way they both still had their socks on, but she'd read an article recently that claimed that people had better orgasms when they kept their feet warm, so that was fine. Besides, that wasn't the part of the body either one was interested in. Sherlock laid her back on the brightly-colored duvet, her head coming to rest on one sham-covered pillow as he knelt between her legs, the look in his eyes feral and desperate enough to pull the breath from her body. Before she could say anything – was there anything to say, really? – he dove down between her knees, mouth coming to rest on her vulva, tongue lapping eagerly where his fingers had been so recently, and all ability to speak or even think was pulled from her mind, draining away even as her blood headed southward.

The intensity of her first orgasm was so far off the Richter scale that it may as well have shot her into orbit, and it came much quicker than she would have anticipated, had her brain been functioning at all. She called out his name, tugging on his curls, nearly crushing his head between her thighs as she rode out the waves, savoring every shudder and quake until finally falling limp, mouth open and gasping, heart galloping, lungs laboring to bring in much-needed oxygen.

His body settled over hers as she finally managed to peel her eyes open; his were focused intently on her face, his lips parted and still shiny with her juices. The urge to taste herself was one she couldn't resist, and so she pulled him down for an intense, leisurely kiss. He ground himself against her lightly as they grappled together, until she couldn't wait a second longer and begged him to take her.

Later she would chastise herself for not using a condom, even though it would turn out to have been utterly unnecessary, but Molly's normal, careful self was utterly subsumed by the wicked wanton she'd become under Sherlock's assiduous attention. So instead of groping for a foil packet from the squashed, mostly empty box buried in the bottom of her nightstand drawer, she opened her legs and grasped Sherlock's erection, guiding him directly inside her.

He gave a surprised grunt as she lifted her hips, impaling herself on his length immediately rather than easing into it, but his eager thrusts as she wrapped her legs around his thighs told her she'd made the right decision. His kisses turned sloppy, as did hers, as they matched each other thrust for thrust. Molly held on for dear life as he sped up, one hand clutching his hair and the other grasping his shoulder, nails digging small divots into the skin covered by the skull-and-poppy tattoos. When she came a second time her mouth had replaced her hands, and she bit down, adding bite marks to the scratches, marking him temporarily at least as her own. He let out a strangled gasp and quickly joined her, spilling his seed inside her, resting his head on her shoulder as the two of them rode out their mutual orgasms.

There was no time for post-coital cuddling, even if Sherlock were so inclined to such a thing; his mobile buzzed not five minutes after they separated their sticky, sweaty selves, and he picked it up with what Molly chose to interpret as reluctance. "Mycroft," he announced as he read the text, tossing the phone back onto her nightstand, where it had ended up sometime during the unclothing aspect of the evening. "A car will be here in fifteen minutes to pick me up. Just time for a shower."

Molly nodded, watching numbly as he picked up the neatly folded pile of new clothes she'd acquired for him – faded t-shirt, blue jeans, shorts, socks, a grey hoody – and headed for her bathroom without a backwards glance.

 _Not gonna cry,_ she silently chided herself as she felt the all-too familiar tightness in her throat. The tightness that had plagued her almost continually since he'd told her how much she counted, that he needed her.

That he was going to die.

And now here he was, a dead man under the spray in her shower, discarded clothing littering her floor and his semen drying on her thighs while she huddled under the duvet and counseled herself not to let the tears clogging her throat actually make their way to her eyes.

He was out of the bathroom in ten minutes, hair still wet and clinging to his head, fully clothed in nothing that Sherlock Holmes would ever wear unless undercover for a case. Molly sat up, modestly holding the sheet to cover herself, returning the clear-eyed look he gave her, chin up, willing herself to show no signs of the emotional meltdown she was sure to experience as soon as he was gone.

Unexpectedly he crossed back to the bed, leaning over her and kissing her as if his life depended on the oxygen in her lungs filling in for his own breath. When the kiss ended she stared up at him, glassy eyed and unable to think, watching as he scooped up his mobile and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. "Changed my mind," Sherlock said abruptly as he shoved his feet into the worn pair of workman's boots she'd picked up at a local charity shop.

"About what?" Molly finally ventured as he sat on the edge of her bed and bent down to lace the boots up.

He turned and looked at her; her breath caught at the fierceness of his expression, and then caught again as he reached out and tenderly stroked her cheek with one hand. "About not waiting for me. Be here when I get back, no matter how long it takes. I know I'm being a selfish bastard, Molly, but I can't…I won't come home and find you with some other man's ring on your finger or baby in your belly." His voice was as fierce as his eyes, brow furrowed as he held her gaze with his own. "Promise me. Make this…" He waved one hand toward herself, the rumpled duvet, perhaps the pervading smell of sex in the air. "Make this mean something more than good-bye. Can you do that for me, Molly Hooper?"

She took a deep breath, fingers clamping tightly on the sheets as she nodded. "Yes." Her voice was firm, no sign of the tears she'd been fighting. "For you, Sherlock Holmes, I can wait forever."

And even when 'forever' turned out to be two long, lonely years, she kept that promise, silently praying for his safe return every night before bed and every morning upon waking up until the day he appeared in her locker room mirror at work. His smile was warm, sad, welcoming and tentative all at once, but the excited kiss she greeted him with left no doubt in his mind that Molly Hooper was, as always, as good as her word.

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 _Note: That bit about supposedly having more orgasms when wearing socks? Totally not making it up. There was a study done in 2012 if you want to check it out!_


End file.
